Co-Founder / CEO

Company Context

Pitch1000 is an early-stage company building an institutional-grade investment-readiness education, assessment, and data platform. The initial product is a modular, AI-supported curriculum and assessment product sold into university entrepreneurship programs, pitch competitions, accelerators, and incubators to prepare students & budding entrepreneurs for successful interactions with institutional investors and stakeholders.
Pitch1000 is seeking a CEO to focus on execution: someone to convert a strong framework and a credible founding team into signed institutional customers, a funded balance sheet, and a repeatable sales motion.

Founding Team Structure

This is a three-co-founder structure. Two co-founders drive overall strategy and provide access to extensive professional networks across venture capital, fintech, and entrepreneurship ecosystems. The CEO/Co-Founder is the third seat and owns execution. The CEO is expected to operate with full ownership of the operating plan while collaborating closely on strategic direction and leveraging the co-founders’ networks for warm access to institutions and investors with the original co-founders acting as partners and a resource to the CEO.

What This Role Owns

• Institutional sales & marketing: Build and run the go-to-market motion that lands the first cohort of paying institutional customers — entrepreneurship centers, pitch competitions, accelerators, and incubators. All co-founders will be available for sales calls.
• Institutional fundraising: Lead the raise. Develop narrative, materials, investor pipeline, and close — supported by co-founder networks, warm introductions, and participation as needed.
• Execution of the educational strategy: Translate the modular curriculum-and-assessment concept into a deliverable product and a pilot pipeline, deciding what can ship manually before any platform build.

Who We're Looking For

A builder-operator who has carried a venture from zero. The ideal candidate has sold into or operated within entrepreneurial education, venture acceleration, or incubator environments, and brings a usable network among the institutions this product serves. This is not a manager-of-managers role; it is a hands-on role in which the CEO will personally run sales calls, create pitches, and close both customers and capital.

• Demonstrated experience selling to or operating within universities, accelerators, incubators, or entrepreneurship programs — with a relevant, activatable network.
• A track record of early-stage execution: first revenue, first institutional customers, or a closed early funding round.
• Direct fundraising experience, or a credible, demonstrable path to it through prior raises or investor relationships.
• Comfort with a sweat-equity arrangement and the ambiguity of a pre-funding venture.

Compensation

This is a sweat-equity co-founder position. Compensation is equity during the pre-funding period, converting to a market-rate compensation once institutional funding is secured. Equity split, vesting, and the salary-conversion trigger are to be negotiated with the founding team and documented in a founder agreement.